Tote #13 Dahlia Tote

Time for another tote! This summer is zooming by but I find that I use totes in the summer more than any other season.  Whether it’s off to the beach, or a road trip or a picnic, it seems there’s always a tote in hand.

The Dahlia tote is the biggest tote I have ever made (The finished exterior front was 21″ H x 24″ W before I boxed the bottom) so even though it is the Dahlia Tote, maybe it should be called the Kitchen Sink Tote.  It might . . . actually . . . yes, the kitchen sink might just fit.  In any case, a large picnic quilt and two large beach towels easily fit inside with room for more!

Last year, I created the Dahlia Dance pillow and I sell the SVG files and pillow instructions packaged as a CD for sale in quilt shops.  I love the shape of it and have wanted to create a tote with that same kind of design ever since.

 

I used the Silhouette Cameo to cut out the petals backed with Heat n’ Bond.  I created a freezer paper template for this project (also cut with the Silhouette).  If you haven’t used freezer paper, you gotta try it. Amazing stuff.  It irons on with a couple quick passes of the iron (shiny side down) and stays in place until you decide to pull it up.  For this project, it made it a snap to place the pieces evenly.  I did place the outer pieces by hand but I did those last after I had already established the spacing.

After ironing on the Dahlia Shape, I raw-edge appliqued around each piece using grey thread and simply straight stitching next to the raw edge.  This was not difficult, although it was kind of time-consuming.

I did make a few mistakes along the way.  Do not sew after midnight, ha ha, or you may do dumb things.  You will notice a little puckering in the exterior.    I always put shapeflex on when I use a foam core interfacing and you can see here what happens when it’s not there. There is a little puckering on the sides of the bag and on the center of the Dahlia.  So, as before, I HIGHLY recommend fusing shapeflex onto your fabric before attaching a foam core interfacing like ByAnnie’s Soft and Stable or Pellon flex-foam.

Do you add key fobs to your bags?  I’ve been wanting to add this feature and hadn’t gotten around to it so this time I did.  It’s a great little add-on for a large bag. I’ll definitely be adding this more often to bags. Give it a try! Just create a small strap (see my general tutorial on strap making for strap basics) .  Add a D-ring at one end and stitch the other end to the bag.  Attach a swivel snap hook onto your key ring so that your keys can be easily removed and clipped back onto the bag whenever you want.  No more lost keys!  You can use the hardware available in my keychain hardware kit for this.

I do love this design, though, and I will be sure to use it again for another project.  If you have a Silhouette Cameo or other cutting machine that uses SVG files and are interested, I can add it to the store for a very small fee.  Let me know.

That’s it for now.

Enjoy these summer days and  . . .